Early Maryland County Courts.          lv

      Md. liv, 573). In a Kent County deposition made August 12, 1656, incidental
      reference is made to a “ meeteinge house” on the Severn River, Anne Arundel
      County (Arch. Md. liv, 68), doubtless a reference to a Puritan congregation.
        The interesting case of Joan Mitchell (Michael) involving insinuations of
      witchcraft and a counter suit for defamation, came up in the Charles County
      Court on November 14. 1659. Thomas Mitchell complained to the court that
      “Mis Hatche “, unquestionably the wife of John Hatch, one of Governor Fen
      dali's Council, had brought abuseful reproaches upon Joan, his wife, in having
      declared that Goodie Mitchell had bewitched her face so that “ shee endureth
      abundance of Misery by the soarness of her mouth “, and two depositions were
      filed attesting to the fact that Mrs. Hatch had spread such evil reports. The
      matter seems to have been dropped, however, until nearly two years later when
      at the September 24, 1661, court Joan Mitchell, now a widow, brought suits
      for defamation against four prominent residents of Charles County, including
      Francis. Doughtie, the minister, for having “raysed schandalous reports of
      mee . . . that I salluted a woman at church and her teeth fell a Acking as if
      shee had been mad “. It was also testified that Mrs. Long, one of the others
      sued for defamation, had said that “the hene and Chickens that she had of
      Goodie Mitchell . . . did die in such a strang manner that she thaught sum
      old witch or other had bewitched them “ (pp. 54-55, 139, 142, 144-145, 155,
      156).
        The story of witchcraft in Maryland has only recently been adequately told
      in a paper by Judge Francis Neale Parke, read November 9, 1936, before the
      Maryland Historical Society (Md. Hist. Mag. xxxi, 1936, 271-298). Judge
      Parke here gives an account of the five trials for witchcraft held in Maryland,
      one of which resulted in the execution in 1685 of an unfortunate woman
      Rebecca Fowler. He also refers at some length to the case of Joan Mitchell.
        A free-for-all neighborhood fight that occurred in Charles County in 1663
      resulted in a suit for damages which came before the county court on July 29th.
      It was testified that one of the women participants, “goodie Nevill held forth
      her fingers to wit, her forfinger and her littell finger “, as an insult to her
      antagonist “goodie Dodd” (p. 379). This gesture, the sign of the horns,
      known to those versed in the black art as having come into England from Italy,
      where it was called the mano cornuta, had two meanings. If the fingers pointed
      towards the person suspected, it warded off the baneful influence of the evil
      eye; if pointed to one's own chin it was a gesture of contempt, and an insinua
      tion of the other's conjugal infidelity. As Mrs. Nevill had just said that
      Mrs. Dodd was “Capt. Batten's whore “, the significance of the gesture here
      is rather obvious. In this brawl were fotind not only the Dodds arrayed against
      the Nevills, but also another couple, Richard Roe and his wife, not the fictitious
      legal personage of this name in perpetual conflict with his fictitious adversary,
      John Doe, but a real Charles County planter of that name. Most of the neigh
      bors appeared as witnesses against the Nevills. The melee seems to have
      involved the women more than the men, and the weapons to have been prin
      cipally finger nails and Billingsgate. The damages awarded to the Does were
       groats (pp. 376-383). Another Charles County neighborhood feud involving